


Co-habiting.

by BarPurple



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, angel possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4393376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarPurple/pseuds/BarPurple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Hannah returns to Heaven and Castiel takes her former vessel home he drops into a coffee shop. Of all the java joints in all the world he just had to walk into this one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Missouri November 2014 

They’d been watching the man in the tan trench coat since he walked in and ordered a coffee. There was a dishevelled air about him that could have been the result of a heavy night, or a rough existence and inability to use an iron. The subject of their conversation was rather deeper that the man’s fashion choice.

“What do you think? Has he recognized you?”

“I don’t think so. He does keep looking this way. If anyone will understand it will be Castiel. He has the most direct experience with humanity. He will listen first.”

“Good. Being smited is not on my bucket list.”

Taking a deep breath they walked across the diner to Castiel’s table.

Castiel had been keeping a discreet eye on the woman in the far booth. She appeared to be muttering to herself, but she did have a Bluetooth ear piece, so she could be on the phone. There was just something about her that kept drawing his attention. When she approached his table he thought his scrutiny must have offended her. Meeting her eyes his apology and excuses withered on his tongue as her eyes flashed blue, angel blue, Cas tensed always ready for the worst. 

“Hello Castiel. May we sit down?”

The use of the plural pronoun caused Cas a moment of confusion, but he waved her into the seat opposite him.

“You said ‘we’ will another be joining us?”

“No, bear with us we can explain.”

Cas’ head tilted in curiosity and a brief frown creased his forehead. Meeting another angel who wanted to sit and talk was unusual, but a very welcome change to the normal running, chasing and fighting. He nodded slowly to indicate his willingness to listen as she asked.

The angel inside her caused her eyes to flash blue again briefly.

“I’m Enoch.”

Once her eyes returned to their human brown she continued;

“I go by Sheena. Enoch tells me you’re a good one Castiel and that you’ll hear us out. Is he correct?”

With a wry half smile Castiel replied;

“I’m not sure how good I can claim to be these days, but I will listen if you answer my question first.”

Sheena gave him an encouraging smile so Cas asked;

“You are an occupied vessel and you are aware.”

“That’s not a question as such, but yes. I am an occupied vessel and I am aware of it. Enoch followed the rules and asked permission.”

“But you’re in control. You haven’t been subsumed by Enoch.”

“No I haven’t, but I’m not the only one in control. We are trying something new here, Castiel. We are attempting a symbiosis.”

During their brief conversation Cas had leaned further forward over the plastic table top. As he tried to make sense of what he’d just been told he leaned back with a sigh. He thought he could tell the difference between Sheena and Enoch speaking, but this was a lot to take in. There was only one way to try to make any sense of this situation, licking his lips Cas pulled a question out of the throng and decided it was as good a place to start as any.

“How did this happen?”

Sheena shrugged and signalled for the waitress.

“This is going to take a while. I need a coffee, you want a refill?”

Cas looked down at his half empty cup and nodded. When the cups were full of strong black coffee Sheena and Enoch started to explain.


	2. May 2013 – Randolph New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sheena and Enoch tell their story of the night the angels fell to Earth,

She’d lost track of time, but judging by how empty the bottle was now she must’ve been walking for a least an hour. It took her two attempts to lean against the fence and a lot more than that to try and focus on her surroundings. 

Where the hell was she? 

Another deep slug of the bourbon labelled that question as irrelevant. She wasn’t in the apartment with that jerk, listening to why it was her fault that he’d cheated on her, again! Wherever here was, it was better than there. The anger still bubbled, but the bourbon was driving her along the fast lane to shame and depression. With a sob she slid down the fence and struggled as her coat got snagged. She twisted fruitlessly for a few minutes until with a harsh ripping sound she was dumped on her backside in the mud. 

Well wasn’t that just the cherry on top of a shitastic day?

The sky was pretty tonight. The stars were really bright. Sheena closed one eye and tried to focus. The stars were too bright and falling out of the sky. Blinking several times she carefully put the bottle of bourbon down and tried to make sense of the light show in the sky. A fragment of Sunday School came back to her, something about the sky falling at the end of days. 

Great.

If this was the final chapter and verse she may as well sit back and enjoy as much of the show as she could. Especially pretty blue misty light that was floating towards her.

I am an angel of the Lord. I have a mission to fulfil. Will you give me aid?

The words sank into Sheena’s head without having anything to do with her ears and tonight that didn’t feel that strange.

“Okay. Sure.”

 

X-X

 

The deeply troubled look on Castiel’s face made Sheena pause in telling her story. Cas was thinking back to the weeks he’d spent talking to Jimmy trying, with woeful inadequacy as it turned out, to prepare him to become a vessel and comparing that to Sheena’s experience was unsettling.

“Enoch. I understand that night must have been confusing, but Sheena was intoxicated.”

The woman opposite him smiled sadly and nodded.

“I now understand about informed consent Castiel. Sheena has forgiven me and is helping me to redeem myself. That’s why we’re tryin’ this whole angel vessel thing in a different way Cas.”

Cas blinked and nodded. He didn’t want them to stop their story, but it was a little confusing thinking of them, as well them when there was only one body in front of him.

 

X-X

 

The pretty blue mist turned in to rushing air that plunged into her mouth stealing her breath and suffocated her. The calming words from the angel couldn’t reach her in her choking panic. This thing was killing her and she was fighting back tooth and nail against the drowning sensation.

Fighting against the flood wasn’t working, so she forced herself to relax and let the tide take her with it. Enoch settled into the vessel and rolled his shoulders. He had never left Heaven before so this experience was new to him. He could not be sure how it was supposed to feel. The whole concept of “feel” was alien and not something he had time to explore. He had to find other angels and find out what had happened tonight.

In a corner of the human mind that had been her own Sheena watched the angelic interloper. Or was he a guest? She cursed herself for blindly agreeing when she hadn’t got a clue what was being asked. Whatever he was she could feel the loss and confusion pouring out of his being. They were familiar emotions to her; she’d experienced them on a smaller scale earlier in the evening. Somehow she didn’t think that this angel was going to deal with his feelings at the bottom of a bottle. Watching the thoughts in his mind she had a very bad feeling that tonight was the start of something nasty.

It was a difficult few hours. The babble of the other expelled angels was overwhelming for Enoch. Each new voice offered relief that another brother or sister had survived, but added to the sense of disconnection and panic. In the midst of the noise Enoch found one calm voice inside himself and listened.

“This is a bloody mess. It’s not going to take much to spook this herd into total panic.”

“We are not a herd. We are a host.”

“Sorry my bad. Just the panic in the ‘host’ made me think of a herd of cattle that’s about to stampede.”

“I do not understand.”

“Oh. Well you’re riding around in me. Can you access my memories and things?”

“I believe so.”

The sensation was something akin to sticking a knife into a toaster. One second you’re looking forward to a simple bit of toast and in an instant every nerve is being fried. Neither Enoch nor Sheena could adequately wrap words around the experience. The best description of a poor lot was that every memory they each had suddenly got a hi-def replay all at once. In the space of one human skull that was just too much everything to cope with. 

They were grateful when the car hit them.

Enoch had been walking in an almost straight line towards the nearest angel. For the most part this had involved them following the course of Battle Creek but as fickle as Fate is the moment they had shared everything was the moment they stepped on to Main Street. The car that hit them skidded to a halt twenty yards down the road before backing up. The terrified driver actually got out and bundled the bleeding woman he found on the roadside into the backseat and took her to the nearest hospital, Linwood Memorial.


	3. Memories.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sheena gives Enoch a crash course in human feeling.

Linwood Memorial Hospital was bedlam. There’d been a cluster of angels fall nearby and that resulted in more accidents in the space of two hours than the ER normally got in a week. By the time the nurses got round to Sheena they could find nothing physically wrong with her. She looked to be in shock, so they referred her to psych and hurried off to deal with patients who were critical. 

There was a chaos of a different sort raging inside Sheena’s head. Survival instinct had triggered Enoch to heal their wounds. That plural pronoun was the problem, neither of them felt like distinct personalities. Enoch found comfort in a memory of Sheena’s that turned out to be a scene from a film featuring puppets. It was a handy fiction to use as a guidepost in the melting pot that was now their memory.

From behind Sheena’s glazed eyes Enoch watched Dean Winchester carry his brother into the ER and holler for help. The sight of the hunters sent them spinning into a maelstrom of memories that it took them a few hours to sort out.

 

X-X

 

“You were experiencing Enoch’s memories?”

“And Sheena’s. She has read the Book of Winchester, and a fair bit of the fanfiction online. Explaining that concept to Enoch was awkward.”

There was a grin on her face that Cas thought was from Sheena and a slightly uncomfortable look that had to be from Enoch. Cas had to admit he was fascinated by the easy duality angel and human were apparently sharing.

 

X-X

 

Dean Winchester’s all angels prayer cut through the swirling memories in their head like a blow torch through butter. Enoch suddenly had a clear purpose. The orders over angel radio where clear. The Winchesters were to blame for the fall. They were to be destroyed. Enoch nodded, but found he could not move. There would be no fighting the Winchester brothers until he won the fight inside his vessel.

“Your vessel. My body. What the hell are you thinking of? We are not going to hurt the Winchesters. If this mess is their fault they will fix it. You know that.”

“I must obey my orders.”

“Blindly? Without thinking about how bloody stupid those orders are?”

“I am an angel of Heaven. I obey.”

“I’m a human of Earth and I say bugger that!”

“Your objection is noted, but it is irrelevant.”

Enoch swung the vessels feet over the side of the bed and stood up. He felt a wave of rage from Sheena and was hit with a flood of memories and emotions the knocked him backwards over the bed he had just rose from.

Everything he knew about the Winchesters was pouring through his mind. These were his memories, but Sheena had put them under the lens of her emotions. Now the scenes he had witnesses or heard about were suddenly more intense. Instead of dispassionate observation here was fear, terror, and revulsion tempered with pity, sorrow and understanding. Frustration, pride, joy, relief, gratitude and love. Enoch had watched humanity, but nothing prepared him for the onslaught of feelings; the understanding that it was possible to feel all these things at once almost expelled him from the vessel in an attempt to escape the unfamiliar sensations. Sheena somehow held him fast.

“These are the men your orders say you must kill. Look at them! See them!”

And suddenly the focus wasn’t just on the brothers, but also on the people they had saved and after them the people whose lives had been touched by the novels of apparent fiction that told their history. In a small way Dean and Sam had brought a flame of hope into the lives of people who thought the brothers were nothing but words on a page. The ripples these two hunters had caused in the world appeared infinite and in the face of that revelation Enoch felt so very small and lost for the second time in the space of twenty-four hours.


	4. The Way to Make a Difference.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waiting for someone else to do something is not an option.

When Enoch became aware of himself again hours had passed. They were lying in a hospital bed. Sheena was watching a muted television. She felt the change in his state within her mind and said quietly.

“Welcome to humanity.”

Enoch couldn’t understand the smile in her voice. His wretchedness was clear in Sheena’s mind.

“Why do you keep going?”

Sheena’s answer came in the form of more memories. Slowly like a flower unfolding Enoch saw the happiness she’d experienced in the big moments of her life and the small.

“I should vacate your body.”

“And where are you going to go?”

A nurse bustling by frowned and threw Sheena a puzzled look which she returned with a weak smile. Talking to herself was not going to get her out of here any quicker; she’d have to be more careful when talking to the voice in her head. Enoch had no idea why that thought was funny, so he ignored it and carried on with what he considered the pressing issue. 

“I can exist without a vessel.”

“I guess that won’t make finding out what went down last tonight easy.”

“No.”

“So stay.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been listening in on angel radio and I’m not impressed by some of the chatter. I’ve spent my whole life looking at messed up situations and wondering why people don’t do things differently. Today I realised I never do, so how can I expect anyone else to change. So, how about you and I find a different way to do this who angel human thing?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, any thoughts? Let me know the good, the bad and the ugly.


	5. Chapter 5

Castiel sat back against the padded seat of the booth. He was looking at the being opposite him in confused wonder. 

“You alright Cas?”

Shaking his head more to clear it than indicate a negative Cas sat forward again. It took him a moment and a few failed attempts, but he finally got his thoughts into a semblance of order.

“What are you?”

Sheena laughed, it was an easy carefree sound and Castiel found himself wondering how that emotion felt from Enoch’s point of view.

“We’ve been trying to work that out for the past few months. We are not Nephilim, but we aren’t a normal occupied vessel. Sheena is insisting on calling us Trill, after a fictional symbiotic alien lifeform from Star Trek.”

Cas smiled.

“I get the reference and I think it’s a good name. You appear to be hiding from Heaven, what do you want from me?”

The serious look that descended over their features was all Enoch.

“I do not want to be exiled from our home Castiel and I do not want to be hunted down and forced to return without Sheena. We both believe that this, our Trill way of doing things maybe how angels can walk the earth in future without destroying the vessel. Can you plead our case with Heaven? Can you get them to give us a chance?”

Castiel looked around the coffee shop. It was such an ordinary place; no different from thousands of others, but this was the one he had walked into at this time on this day. This was the little coffee shop where the right people met at just the right time. Castiel still hoped that this was a small sign of his Father at work in the greater scheme of things. It was a small hope and most of the time he put events like this down to blind fate, or dumb luck, but today he would let himself hope and maybe even believe.

“Enoch. Sheena. I will plead your case with Heaven and I feel it will be well received. There are some things I need to tell you. Would you like another coffee?”

Around them the little coffee shop carried on with its day. In the years to come this little place survived economic downturns and hostile buy out attempts from the big chains. Nobody really knew why, but the owner and her kids would say that they must have a guardian angel and that always got a smile from the regulars.

**Author's Note:**

> This idea has been bouncing around in my head for a while. I don't know how much further I'm going to take it, but I felt it was ready enough to share.


End file.
